DirecTV THR-22 Hard Drive Upgrade

I am by no means an expert on this subject, but after poking around for 10+ hours on the various forums I found a lot of "mis"information concerning external SATA hard drives and replacing internal hard drives in a Direct TV DVR. I am not going to go into great detail but instead focus on the route I choose. This is what I learned:

The THR22 is the same as the HR22, the only difference is the operating system. The good news is the operating system no longer lives on the internal hard drive like the older DTV/Tivo units. All one needs to do is replace the hard drive and reboot. (Preferably with a video rated hard drive, such as I did with a 2TB Western Digital WD20EURS.) The bad news is due to the flood in Thailand last year, the supply of these drives have "dried up" worldwide. Maybe someone can offer suggestions for alternatives to the the Western Digital Video rated drives?

There are 2 ways to go about adding hard drive space to you THR-22. (In both cases you loose all shows and programming on the original internal hard drive.)

1.) Add an external Drive with SATA connection (Lots of recipes for failure depending on the brand/model of Hard Drive and External Case you use)

2.) Open the case and replace the internal hard drive. (Simple and straight forward but you void the warranty and some by-laws)

I decided that finding the correct external SATA drive/case option was to much trouble, even DTV does not officially support them.
So I went the internal route, here are the 5 easy steps if you are computer-savy.

1.) If you are afraid of the warranty issue. (Stop right here)

2.) Unplug the THR22 and disconnect all cabling. (If you can't re-connect the cables .. Stop right here!)

3.) Open up the case. (If you can't do this then stop right here)

4.) Replace the hard drive. (If you can't do this then stop right here)

5.) Re-connect all the cables and plug it in. (The THR-22 will automatically format the drive upon power up.)

I have been enjoying my new 300 hour HD recording capability on my THR-22 for over 2 weeks now. No issues!

Its nice to hear the drive can be upgraded but bad to here the OS is on a chip, therefore meaning it more than likely cant be modified.

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Why do you think that? I highly doubt they're using a one-time programmable ROM to store the OS.

I'm more surprised TiVo coded this into their OS. I wonder what the partition structure of the internal OS drive is (if it has it's own MFS partitions or if it's really just the OS). I'm guessing it has a small MFS partition for loopsets/channel info/etc, then all the recordings are stored on the SATA HD (as if it were an external HD for a normal TiVo)

That's what I'm saying.. if it is on a "chip" (which seems to be the case given the OP's success at cold-replacing the HD), that chip doesn't have to be one time programmable. I'd be willing to bet it's read/write and allows for OS updates.

As for that partition map, it looks like it came from a 2TB hard drive, not the internal partition the OP is talking about.

That's what I'm saying.. if it is on a "chip" (which seems to be the case given the OP's success at cold-replacing the HD), that chip doesn't have to be one time programmable. I'd be willing to bet it's read/write and allows for OS updates.

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I think what sk33t3r is talking about is user mods to the OS. Then again, you can't do that on any of the newer TiVos. While the s/w is still on the disk, the h/w verifies the signature.

The DirecTV DVR hardware, which includes the THR22, has the ability to download firmware from the satellite on demand. I am not sure if the firmware is stored in chips or on the disk, but either way it can take a blank disk and make it usable. I suspect the firmware is in chips, as when I replaced the disk in mine last weekend, it took less time to set it up than my HR21 (same hardware) takes to download a new software version.

I think what sk33t3r is talking about is user mods to the OS. Then again, you can't do that on any of the newer TiVos. While the s/w is still on the disk, the h/w verifies the signature.

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Thanks, I see what he was saying now. I took "modified" to mean modified at all, manufacturer included, which just wouldn't make sense. While user mods are more difficult with the OS stored on NAND/Flash/etc, it's still not impossible to read/write it. The integrity checks are still the limiting factor, as pointed out.

I wasnt clear I see now, but yes user mods, now if we could match teh signature or do a monte then we have a shot. But I dotn need all the other crap any how as long as perm 30 second skip is there for my wife

Seagate Pipeline AV 500GB. I initially replaced mine with a Seagate Barracuda 2TB, but recordings kept stuttering and freezing. Thinking that the "power savings" features of that Barracuda were responsible, I bought a Pipeline HD 2TB (seems to be the same as Pipeline AV), only to have the same problems on HD recordings made over the next week. I just got back from a 12-day vacation and an HD recording made on the 30th was fine, while one made on the 24th was not. Will keep trying to see if this was a "teething" issue.

Seagate Pipeline AV 500GB. I initially replaced mine with a Seagate Barracuda 2TB, but recordings kept stuttering and freezing. Thinking that the "power savings" features of that Barracuda were responsible, I bought a Pipeline HD 2TB (seems to be the same as Pipeline AV), only to have the same problems on HD recordings made over the next week. I just got back from a 12-day vacation and an HD recording made on the 30th was fine, while one made on the 24th was not. Will keep trying to see if this was a "teething" issue.

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Just to bump this thread 5 months later....
Any update on this, The best hard drive to use?

Also, did you have any issues swapping drives after you had activated the receiver? Did you have to re-activate it or reauthorize it? or is the activation info all held in the hardware?

The Pipeline HD drive had the same problems, but DirecTV said I had signal strength issues and sent a tech who ended up replacing my dish and SWM8 with a SWMline3. I had swapped the original 500GB drive back. I have since seen recommendations for a 2TB WD disk - I bought one but have not yet installed it. No issues with activation - just install the disk and power on.